Arusha 3

Street smart lawyers and complicated big wigs in ICTR's corridors

BY GEORGE KAGAME
Arusha

The turns and twists at the ICTR sometimes can almost be compared to Steven Spielberg's Hollywood blockbusters.

A typical day at the court, (and by typical I mean you report to office and head straight to the courtrooms where lawyers and judges juggle away in intellectual language).

In many of these arguments, you need an eagle's eye to pick a story, so as it goes the public galleries many times are filled with tourists.

The court is one of the packages that Arusha's leisure industry and myriad travel agencies, visiting the court is high on the special itinerary for tourists in Arusha.
The public galleries of the courtrooms sometimes resemble tour centre, filled with many tourists and their travel garb.

On such days when the lawyers decide to spend the entire working day arguing, a journalist has no story, I call them 'nightmare days.'
However, this routine can be broken anytime with no ceremony, because most of the court's activities don’t take place inside the courtrooms, today as I was pacing around the corridors snooping around for a possible idea, a story appears from no where.

This was about time when panic and depression was high, I was wondering what my editors back in Kigali were thinking in regard to my usefulness to the editorial team, I could imagine them nodding their heads in agreement about a possible replacement during the proverbial Monday morning meetings.

At the ICTR such days are many when you are in the above state of mind, little wonder the nearby huge supermarket is largely filled with liquor and other alcoholic drinks.

From heaven God sends a story, today it was about a smart legal executive for a powerful Kenyan petroleum distribution and marketing firm whose image is violated by alleged business links between the firm and Genocide suspect Felicien Kabugaa who is reportedly hiding in Kenya.

During our first meeting the lawyer was reluctant to tell me his presence at the ICTR, so as fate would have it we have a dinner meeting tonight which i intend not to honour.

Before meeting another street smart lawyer, I was reading through another judgment for this week where once again the ICTR big wigs once again showed their disapproval of the quality and incompetence of their counterparts in Rwanda by turning down another request to transfer Gaspard Kanyarukiga who is charged with four counts of acts against humanity.


The judges are not happy with Rwanda's judicial system but they have oiled their words in such a way that they happy with Rwanda's continuing judicial reforms since 2003. The ICTR has been facilitating the training and capacity building of Rwanda's judiciary.

However, in their earlier judgment in the case involving Yusuf Munyakazi where they also refused to transfer the accused to Rwanda, the judges showed sympathy towards Fernando Merreles and Bruguiliere for their indictments to some leaders within the RPF.


The decision left me wondering why the ICTR judges showed sympathy towards Bruguliere and Merelles and instead dismissed the competence of Rwandan legal experts.
A contrast? Yes, one would argue, but it is important to note here that the issue of transferring cases is a very complex one, for example the issue involves the role of France in the genocide.

For the record, in the case of France for example, almost all the suspects that have critical information regarding the role of France in Rwanda 1994 have been facilitated in one way or another to have their cases tried elsewhere, the judges, it has been said, have used the data from institutions such as Human Rights Watch among others to come to the conclusion that Rwanda's judicial system is not competent enough to try their fellow Rwandans in a fair and open manner.


If the judiciary in Rwanda is under pressure as the judges alleged last week, the ICTR is also under some pressure from powers like France.

The transfers also have a direct bearing in another more important aspect of the ICTR, the completion strategy. The same court also allowed the transfer of suspects to France earlier, however, the past two weeks the court turned down requests to transfer of suspects to Rwanda, in these particular cases there was insider politics at play and I don’t have a legal mind!


These reports and judge verdicts have put the entire Gacaca system into question, Gacaca has been described as the best possible arrangement for justice in Rwanda in light of 1994. One guy argued the other day during the lunch break that 'Rwandans are the best placed people to give lectures on human rights and justice, not white collared people in dark suits.'

So the court once again refused to transfer two 'small fish' in Munyakazi and Kanyarukiga to Rwanda and allowed France to try the 'bigger fish' which ought to be swimming in the waters of Arusha Detention facilities.

Whenever, the government of Rwanda responds to such decisions such as the refusal to transfer of cases to Rwanda, defense lawyers record everything that Martin Ngoga and Karugarama say, the sound bites form these two legal experts in Kigali sometimes provide amusement during court proceedings.

Spiced with the necessary legal jargon even the simplest and casual statement is made to look very huge and monstrous by the lawyers.

To be continued.........